Emerald Greene and the Witch Stones Read online

  With his best overarm, he hurled the sweet forward into the clearing.

  A second later, with a sound like a firecracker, the peppermint hit an invisible wall and came bouncing back at him, skimming past his ear with the force of a flying bullet.

  ‘Wow!’ Richie ducked as the sweet shattered against a nearby beech-tree, white fragments scattering in the undergrowth.

  More impressed than frightened, he straightened up and re-positioned his crooked glasses. Right. So that was good. He knew where it was, now. He moved forward, palms flat again, and - there. It felt like a solid, invisible brick wall.

  He pressed his palms against the barrier.

  Yes - there. He felt a tingle on his skin, like he was touching cold water. And no, it did not feel like brick now. It was softer than that - somehow tough but yielding. Like... yes, like canvas. It felt just like the taut, thin, strong wall of the tent his mum and dad had bought, the one they’d used last year on that camping trip to Devon.

  Richie pressed hard with both hands, feeling the tingling in his palms growing stronger. The barrier pushed against him, but he got the sense that he was winning.

  He closed his eyes. His tongue tingled, and began to taste of metal.

  She walked through this. We saw her. So I ought to be able to as well. So just ignore it. Ignore the fact that there’s even a barrier there and walk forward.

  Something whooshed past his body, like a warm summer breeze washing over him. He wobbled, steadied himself.

  The sound of the cawing rooks grew quieter, as if someone had turned down their volume. Now, there was an oddly fresh smell around him, like newly-cut grass, and he could hear the splashing of fountains, tuning itself in like a radio station on short-wave. He felt warm sunlight on his face and something crunchy beneath his feet. He could hear a breeze rustling in leaves somewhere nearby, too. Not daring to open his eyes and look yet, Richie lowered his hands.

  ‘Okay. Don’t get freaked out by this,’ he said out loud to himself. Then he added,

  ‘You’re talking to yourself again.’

  And then, ‘I know,’ and, ‘Well, stop it, I don’t like it,’ and, ‘Okay, then.’

  He opened his eyes.

  He was standing on a long gravel drive lined with splashing fountains, neatly-trimmed hedges and statues. About fifty yards in front of him sat a house - large, golden and welcoming, with scarlet creeper on its walls and its sunlight glinting from its windows.

  He whirled around. The gardens stretched away in the other direction, towards high hedges and open parkland. No sign of the woodland clearing at all.

  ‘Oh, yes! Result!’ Richie waved a fist in the air.

  As magic goes, he thought cheerfully, that pretty much takes the chocolate cream bourbon.

  He started to hurry up the crunching gravel drive towards the front door. After a second, he staggered, as an overwhelming dizziness took hold of him, like someone shoving him hard to one side, and he almost lost his balance.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, steadying himself. ‘None of that.’

  He blinked, focused on the front door of the house and marched forward determinedly.

  ‘This is what we need!’

  Emerald Greene thumped a thick volume down on the Library table. Clouds of dust billowed up towards the vaulted ceiling, and Jessica stared worriedly at the book.

  If she was honest, Jess was still in a state of shock. In the last half-hour, she felt she had just wandered into the middle of someone else’s dream.

  Emerald had parked the Dormobile - olive-green, Jess noted - and they had disembarked, Anoushka hopping down after the girls. Breathing fresh and summery air, a dizzy Jess had allowed herself to be frogmarched up the front steps into the house. And with Anoushka trotting at their heels, Emerald had shown her around her impossible home.

  Emerald, quite casually, flung open one door after another and let Jess look in. First there was a yellow lounge with a chaise-longue and a huge chandelier, then a big drawing-room with comfortable sofas, then a massive, oak-panelled library with rows and rows of ancient books stretching off in all directions.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Jess had said at last, staring around her. ‘How is this house here, hidden in the middle of the woods? It shouldn’t exist any more!’

  ‘The chronostatic field allows a bubble of Time to exist one millisecond ahead of what you call reality,’ Emerald Greene explained. Her eyes glinted, as green as the pendant she wore around her neck. ‘We are within the bubble. A fold in Time, if you like.’

  So casual, she could be describing the Number 32 bus, Jess thought.

  ‘So much to take in, isn’t it?’ drawled Anoushka, who was circling round at Jess’s feet. ‘Let me know if your unfeasibly tiny mind gets overloaded, won’t you?’

  Jess gave the cat a strained smile.

  ‘This,’ Emerald said, ‘is Rubicon House before it was destroyed by fire - only without it actually being in the past. And with a few minor adjustments of my own.’

  In a big, tile-floored kitchen, Emerald had cooked Jess the best English breakfast she had ever had: fresh orange juice and crunchy, buttery toast, then a plate of crumbly bacon, smooth poached eggs and organic mushrooms which popped inside her mouth with a juicy taste explosion. She had also brewed a gloriously strong pot of Darjeeling tea.

  ‘Salt, sugar, proteins,’ explained Emerald Greene. ‘Passing through the Barrier has odd effects on your body the first few times. You need to restore these to your body.’

  Then they had headed down an oak-panelled corridor, past some suits of armour, and had come out on the far side of the Library. Emerald had climbed a huge, rickety stepladder; Jess, gawping upwards with a crick in her neck, had been convinced it wasn’t going to stay upright.

  The Library seemed to stretch upwards for ever. Surely it was taller than the house? While Jess was puzzling that one over, she thought she saw something - a shadow? - flitting among the highest shelves. She couldn’t be certain, though, and dismissed the idea.

  Finally, Emerald had descended with the dusty, leather-bound book.

  ‘Witches,’ whispered Emerald now, leafing through the book.

  Jess frowned. ‘Which is what?’

  ‘No - witches.’

  Jess paused, blinked. ‘You’re joking, right?’

  ‘I am joking, wrong,’ said Emerald, looking up coldly. ‘It is what we are dealing with.’ She had taken off her blue sunglasses and her green eyes seemed to shine with that compelling inner light again.

  ‘But - witches?’ Jess repeated. ‘Warty old biddies with big noses and bad teeth who ride broomsticks? And have cats?’ she added pointedly.

  Anoushka peered out from behind a bookshelf, where he was scrabbling suspiciously. ‘Mythology has a lot to answer for,’ the cat purred, his green eyes flashing, and then he slunk back behind the books.

  Then Emerald seemed to stop for a minute, leaning back and pricking up her ears like a cat. ‘Who is there?’ she asked. ‘Come out!’

  Jess swallowed hard. Her heart pounded as a shadow appeared from behind one of the bookcases.

  And then she breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Richie, awkwardly, and polished his glasses. ‘I... wanted to make sure Jess was all right,’ he explained to Emerald.

  ‘How did you get in?’ Jess asked admiringly.

  Richie shrugged. ‘Same way you did.’

  Emerald sighed. ‘I can see I will have to do some work on the chronostatic alignments... Well, now you are here...’

  Jess smiled gratefully at Richie. ‘Welcome to the madhouse,’ she whispered.

  ‘I’d never have believed it,’ he whispered in awe, gazing up at the vast ranks of the Library shelves. ‘Good job I came to see for myself.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I feel a bit weird.
I think I need a cup of tea.’

  Emerald folded her arms. ‘Later. Now, look, both of you - forget folk legends and children’s tales.’ She leaned forward over the table, red hair falling across her face. In the dusty gloom of the library, her eyes seemed to shine like her emerald pendant. ‘Witches are dangerous creatures who should never be crossed. Sometimes their own powers are...’ Emerald shuddered. ‘Too monstrous for them to contain.’

  Richie pulled a sceptical face. ‘But they only come out at Hallowe’en, right? The rest of the time they hide away in forests, chucking eye of whatsit and tongue of doo-dah into big casseroles... Don’t they?’ he added, slight doubt creeping into his voice.

  ‘I’ve been there already,’ said Jess, holding up a hand. ‘Trust me, she didn’t like it.’

  Behind them, there was a squeal and a slither as Anoushka pounced on an unfortunate mouse.

  ‘You are not taking this seriously, are you, Richard?’ Emerald shook her head in despair. ‘Believe me, witches are no laughing matter. They are real, they exist. They can take many forms. And they can be truly evil.’ She thumped the book to emphasise the last word.

  Jess looked down at the book. According to the gold embossing on its cover, it was called Lore of Albion Guiding the Fullest History, Taming and Containment of Witches. Despite herself, she felt a little shiver. ‘Evil...’ she repeated softly, and her fingers traced the golden letters on the front of the book.

  Emerald nodded eagerly. ‘And, what is more, I think we may be facing something more dangerous still. These are not just witches. They are the ghosts of witches. Wraiths.’

  ‘The ghosts of witches?’ Jess looked up sharply. ‘You mean, intrusions of temporo-whatsit? Like you said before?’

  Emerald nodded.

  ‘This is all a bit beyond me,’ said Richie, slumping into an armchair.

  ‘So... you’ve been sent here to deal with the... witches?’ Jess asked.

  She didn’t like saying the word, now. It didn’t sound as comical and childish as it had done. It sounded a scratchy, scraping, spine-tingling word, a word of shadows and dark laughter.

  ‘Yes,’ said Emerald.

  ‘But how - how did you end up getting here, living here? And being a pupil at Aggie’s?’

  ‘Where are your mum and dad?’ Richie asked suddenly.

  Jess realised that they had seen nobody else since entering the house. ‘Yeah, do you have a mum and dad, Em?’

  For the first time, Emerald looked away, as if Jess had touched upon something which she ought not to have mentioned.

  ‘Well?’ Richie asked.

  There was a hushed stillness in the Library. An ancient silence, but for the creaking of the old shelves and the skittering, somewhere deep within them, of Anoushka’s paws.

  ‘I am Displaced,’ said Emerald Greene. ‘It is my shame.’

  ‘Shame? What - ’

  ‘I cannot discuss it,’ said Emerald sharply.

  ‘Why not?’ said Jess, who was beginning to feel a little aggrieved.

  Emerald looked up, and her eyes were strangely piercing for a moment. ‘Because I would rather not!’ she snapped.

  ‘That’s not an answer.’

  ‘All right - then try this. I have seen your aunt. Why does she only wear one gold earring when it is obviously part of a pair? Is she absent-minded? I think not.’

  Jess felt her face reddening, both in embarrassment and anger. She knew the answer to this, of course, but she wasn’t about to tell Emerald Greene. Not yet. Richie looked from one girl to the other in concern.

  ‘There,’ said Emerald, with a note of triumph in her voice. ‘Some things you do not discuss, some things I do not discuss. You see?’ She opened the heavy book and started riffling through the gold-leafed pages. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘it is here somewhere...’

  ‘What... what are you looking for?’ Jess asked, folding her arms somewhat defensively now.

  ‘The answer to some of your questions. Aha!’ she said, stabbing a finger down at a page.

  Jess and Richie, their qualms forgotten in their excitement, peered over Emerald’s shoulder. The yellowing page showed an old map of Meresbury and the district; Jess guessed it had to be at least a hundred years old.

  ‘Here is the Ten Sisters circle.’ Emerald pointed to the symbol, north-east of the city on Scratchcombe Edge. ‘And here is the Cathedral.’ She indicated the cross in the city centre. ‘And here...’ Her finger ran along the page to the east. ‘Here is the Darkwater.’ She looked up at them, expectant. ‘What do you notice?’

  ‘A triangle!’ said Richie.

  ‘Exactly. Some people might call it a conjunction of ley-lines. Look.’ Emerald fished a school exercise-book from her pocket, and with a red felt-tip, she marked three dots on the page.

  ‘Not just a triangle,’ said Jess. ‘Almost a perfect triangle.’

  ‘Equilateral,’ said Richie.

  Emerald nodded. ‘These old superstitions have some basis in fact. And that idiot Ulverston, so dismissive of the old ways, has opened up a channel.’

  ‘For... what?’ Jess asked, and she felt a cold shiver throughout her body.

  Emerald held her hands out as if cupping an invisible globe. ‘Meresbury,’ she said, ‘stands on what you might call a chronomutic fissure where the ley-lines meet. A... crack, if you like, in normal space and Time.’ Emerald splayed her fingers out.

  ‘A crack?’ exclaimed Jess, alarmed.

  ‘Yes, yes, do not worry. They are found all over Albion. All over Britain, I mean... They are perfectly harmless if you do not go poking about in them.’

  ‘But... if you do?’ Richie ventured.

  ‘Well, you saw. Ulverston could see no further than his own ambition. And he may unwittingly have provided an entry point back into this world for...’ Emerald turned slowly to look at them each in turn, and her eyes were open wide, unblinking. ‘Something which should have left it behind, a long, long time ago.’

  ‘Right. You’re scaring me now,’ Jess admitted.

  ‘You’d be scaring me, too,’ agreed Richie, ‘if I had any idea what you were on about.’

  Emerald, hands in her pockets, started pacing up and down and muttering to herself. ‘It would be just a question of getting the temporal resonance right... Of course, of course!’ She flicked rapidly through several pages of the book, finally jabbing her finger on to another page. ‘Here we are. Listen to this. When a Witch loses her Life by Force - whether this has been by the Burning or the Drowning - she may enter the State of Wraithdom, a perpetual and wretched Existence where the Knowledge of Eternity is combined with the Absence of Magical Powers. The Witch exists in Limbo, unable to enter Death or to re-enter Life, unless a Channel shall be provided from the Otherworld into either of the Regions beyond.’

  ‘A channel,’ said Jess. ‘That’s what Ulverston’s made?’

  Emerald looked up, nodding, and there was a lustre like starlight in her eyes. ‘Either of the regions beyond...’ she repeated. ‘Ulverston is a fool. He may have put the entire fabric of the continuum in danger!’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Jess. ‘Wasn’t the Prof excavating the tomb of a Viking? Where does that fit into all this?’

  Emerald ignored her and carried on reading.

  ‘To contain a Wraith when she has begun to take corporeal Form, a Barrier in the physical World may be set down, such as a Circle of Chalk or a Ring of Salt. Alternatively, a Challenge may be made, whereby the Strength of the Observer’s Belief banishes the Wraith back to the Otherworld.’

  ‘Faith moves mountains?’ said Richie nervously.

  Emerald turned to him and gave him a broad, dazzling grin. ‘If you like. Yes. That is not such an unusual concept.’

  ‘Okay, look.’ Jess held out her hands in a ‘slow down’ gesture. ‘So
you’re saying that the Prof, without meaning to, disturbed the ley lines when he opened the tomb? And that this is going to let witches return from a state of... limbo?’

  Emerald looked at them both very intently, with a wise and serious expression beyond her apparent years.

  ‘This triangle of land,’ she said, ‘this channel of energy between the stones, the Cathedral and the Darkwater, has been - charging itself with psychic energy for months. I have been monitoring the levels myself!’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘The darkest, oldest powers are gathering in the shadow of Meresbury. Restless spirits... Already they have tried to make themselves manifest.’

  ‘The computer?’ said Richie, remembering.

  ‘Yes,’ Emerald flashed him a broad grin. ‘The computer. Luckily, the channel they chose could not carry the energy, and it blew a fuse. But it tells us something else very important.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Jess asked.

  Again, Emerald seemed to ignore the question. She flicked through several pages of the book, then, which a cry of triumph, stabbed her finger down on a page. ‘It is all here! I doubt the libraries used by the Professor had a copy of this text. Emerald slammed the book shut. ‘We must borrow this! Excuse me, I need to call the Librarian.’

  She opened the book at the flyleaf, then put her fingers in her mouth and let out the most piercing, echoing whistle Richie had ever heard. It made his ears sing with pain.

  There was a fluttering noise from high up in the vaulted ceiling. Richie, heart pounding, looked up and saw an enormous, winged shadow descending from the uppermost shelves.

  There was a great rush of chilly air - and then, with wings outstretched and talons flashing, something began to descend silently from the ceiling.

  Normally, the Ten Sisters would have been silent and still in the pale morning sunlight, watching over the dewy grass - but today the stone circle, sectioned off by striped plastic tape, bustled with activity. Figures stood guard, two at each stone; men and women in black uniforms, black caps and sunglasses, carrying ugly, snub-nosed weapons. A helicopter, blades gently turning, squatted beside the circle like a fat, watchful black raven.